“As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.”

“The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to use the sky forever but live with famineAnd pain a few days: cat nor coyoteWill shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.He stands under the oak-bush and waits The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedomAnd flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it. He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.The curs of the day come and torment himAt distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head, The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes. The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to thoseThat ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him; Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him. III'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtailHad nothing left but unable miseryFrom the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved. We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,Not like a beggar, still eyed with the oldImplacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but whatSoared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its risingBefore it was quite unsheathed from reality”

“What is this thing called life? I believeThat the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,Only we do not call it so--I speak of the lifeThat oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energyMakes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things growFrom a chemical reaction?I think they were here already, I think the rocksAnd the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxieshave their various consciousness, all things are conscious;But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brainBring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glassTo concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearthFrom which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animalsBorn howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryardPrefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,Like the cells of a man's body making one being,They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

“perhaps we desire death / or why is poison so sweet? / why do little Sirens make kindlier music / for a man caught in the net of the world between news-cast & work-desk?”

“Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.”

“We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.”

“We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhmanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from.”